Archive for the ‘Fellowship’ Category

This blog post will be slightly different from my previous entries. In this post I will do my best to explain the different types of Crowd Control found in Lord of the Rings Online.

Daze
The Daze is probably the most common type of CC used in group content. A Daze freezes a mob in place, and makes them unable to perform any action. Daze skills in the game have a duration from a few seconds up to 30 seconds. Some classes can keep single mobs perma-dazed, as it does not trigger any immunity at the end of its duration.
Damage will however break a daze, so be careful with the AoE.

Stun
The Stun behaves almost exactly like the Daze, the exception being that a Stun is not broken by damage. Therefore, Stun skills in the game usually have a much shorter duration than Daze skills. A Stun will also trigger immunity at the end of its duration, where the mob cannot be either Stunned or Dazed for a few seconds.
Some classes’ Stun skills will also trigger a Fellowship Manuevre.

Root
A Root will, as the name suggests, root a mob in place. The mob will still be able to perform actions, and most mobs will ignore the aggro table if rooted. Any player coming within range of the Rooted mobs will be attacked, regardless of aggro. Rooting ranged mobs serves no purpose unless Line of Sight is also broken.
Roots are typically broken from damage being done to the mob, although there can be skills with only a certain percentage chance of being broken on damage. Monster Player Wargs, and some types of mobs in the game have the ability to perma-root players. To break the perma root the mob usually needs to be interrupted or Dazed/Stunned.

Fear
Fears send a mob fleeing, and renders them unable to perform any action. While Fears can be good for temporary CC, i.e. getting a mob off a healer, it can also become quite chaotic if you send multiple mobs running in fear, and can complicate aggro pickup for tanks. Fears are broken by damage.
Players, or Monster Players, in PvP can be feared, but will still be able to move around freely, but will be uncapable of performing any actions.

If you feel I missed something, or feel I’ve got something wrong, please post a comment!

It appears update 14 brought not only Gondor to us, it also brought back the challenge of T2 and T2C instances!

The last couple of years the level of challenge in instances has been reduced, time and time again. It started with RoR, and went completely overboard in HD. This, along with other factors such as the Trait trees, and Turbines decision to not make any traditional instanced group content drove away many people from the game. But with update 14 something happened.

Our tactical mitigation contribution from Vitality had already been removed in an earlier update, but given the difficulty of T2 and T2C stuff, this was probably not something many thought of. And then comes update 14, which has increased the difficulty in instanced group content significantly.

While T1 is still pretty easy, T2 and T2C content has been ramped up so much, that there’s been several topics created around it on the official forums.

But there’s not just complints, as even in these threads, people are not only saying that despite the increased difficulty these instances can be completed by a good group, they’re actually showing it. In fact, there’s a thread created for just that purpose! I can’t even remember the last time there was one of those threads on the official forums.

There has also been several threads created just to thank Turbine for giving us the challenge back in instances.
Like this one, and this one.

I haven’t had much time to do instances myself since U14, and the ones I have done have been T1’s, but I can’t wait to try out some of the old instances again with the difficulty ramped up. It was so long ago since Lotro had a real challenge, so I will probably suck pretty badly until I get into it again. Just imagine, you might actually have instances where you need stat food, potions, scrolls and hope tokens. Where you actually have to pay attention to interupts and corruptions. Where you might actually wipe your group if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing.

After Helms Deep I only levelled up 2 out of my 10 chars at 85 to 95, it just felt like there was absolutely no reason whatsoever to level the rest. Now, I have started to level my alts again, because I just can’t wait to get my hands on these “new” challenges.

Let’s just hope that Turbine doesn’t listen to the few complainers (that probably should stay with the T1 instances) and nerf everything back in to oblivion before I get my chars capped and geared.

So thanks to CSTM’s facebook page, I found this, a collection of screenshots from Lotro, all the way back from early beta.

I started playing Lotro in January 2009, and has since then managed to snap almost 1000 screenshots. I recently went through all my old computers/harddrives, to make sure none of my old screenshots would get lost.

So why not share a bunch of them?

2009-11-20 – The very first screenshot I found, may very well have been the first I took. My hunter posing in Evendim

2009-11-22 – Oh, that old place! Probably the first time I ventured in there

2009-12-12 – Planning raids and smoking pipes in the Kinhsip house

2010-01-06 – My captain has found his look-a-like!

2010-01-17 – All dressed up and nowhere to go!

2010-09-12 – DN, low resolution and lots on the screen.

2010-11-02 – Crowded auctioneer in 21st hall

2010-12-05 – School, or is it Library? Never could keep those two apart

As promised todays post will be about Flight to the lonely Mountain. This is probably one of the most hated raids in Lotro history, and there are several reasons for it. For starters it’s a lair raid, just like the other Erebor raids, and they are generally disliked (Watcher would probably be the exception). But not only is it a lair raid, but there’s also no real boss, just trash mobs, and in general that just gives it the feel of one of the regular quest instances where you guard against attacking enemies (but without any NPC’s helping you). Flight also got of on a bad start, and was taken down almost immediately after release due to bugs in it. It stayed down for quite some time upsetting a lot of people not being able to complete their deeds. It also meant that the raiding kinships couldn’t even start their T2C attempts.

Another thing that makes this raid unlikeable is probably the huge differance in difficulty on T1/T2/C. This raid is probably the easiest raid out there on T1, where you just have to stack a few champs on the spawn point to aoe everything down, but becomes quite a tricky raid on T2, where you have to keep mobs alive, place the groups correctly and above all DPS the right targets in the right order. On T2C this might just be one of the toughest raids in the game, it has after all not been completed by anybody yet. If this is because of the difficulty, or because there’s less dedicated raiders now could be discussed, but I know that there is top raiding kinships that did try it for a long time without success.

What amazes me is that many of the raiding kinships have now stopped trying. I could understand it if T2C had actually been beaten by someone, but right now world first can still be claimed.

I’m not in a raiding kinship myself, but I raid on a regular basis with another kinship, and even after our many, many tries, we have not given up. There is individual players that has, but we still manage (if barely) to get people to still run it. The problem we have right now, is that we never have the same people, if we could have the same 12 every try, we would probably be a lot closer to completing it than we are now. The kinship I raid with cannot get people enough by itself to run it, so there’s where I, and some others, come in, but every single time we actually have to PuG the last 1-3 spots. That means that the whole fight, and tactics, must be explained once again, stealing time from actually being in there doing our stuff. We tried a brand new tactic last Friday and Sunday, and it seems really promising. Hopefully we’ll get some more time testing it this Friday.

The thing I would like to see is that the kinships that stopped trying it would post their strategies on the official forums. Since they no longer benefit from any of that information themselves anymore, it could be a nice thing to let other people (that are still trying) take part of their tactics, and perhaps above all, why they didn’t work. I could understand if kinships still trying it would keep their mouths shut, since you wouldn’t want to give away the world first to someone else by giving them the last piece of the puzzle, but if you don’t even have any intentions of trying it anymore, please share!

It would really suck if this raid wasn’t completed before Helms Deep arrive.

Finally! The European servers are now down for maintenance and we are getting F2P!

My Warden has now hit 59 which means that he can actually be of some use in the Moria instances. And yesterday I did my first “real” tanking with my Warden. We did a GS HM run and i got to tank Igash (while our guardian took care of the Devoted and his archers). I must say that i enjoyed it quite a bit!

I’ve studied tanking with a Warden a lot by reading on the web, mostly other blogs. Because of this I knew pretty much what to expect. I expected some trouble getting initial aggro, but that holding aggro once i got it would be no problem. Both these things were true.

Being used to playing a Hunter in the six man instances and raids, it was quite the opposite being a tank. Normally, with the Hunter, I do anything i can to not get aggro, which can get quite boring when all you want is to see really large yellow numbers. It was definitely more satisfying being a tank, where you don’t have to hold back, you just have to go nuts! Thankfully, I also had a lvl 65 Healer keeping me alive, making it a bit easier than it really should be.

Since most players in my kin (including myself) is casual players it can be quite hard to get a good group for the 6 and 12-man instances in LOTRO, but yesterday we did get a nice group to do Sammath Gûl. It was my first time and I really liked it.

It also meant i could now get my final rad-piece and I’m now ready for the greater challenges ahead. I also got the Bregloch earring, which sadly enough is really nice compared to my other crappy jewelery, I really have to do something about that.

Besides SG there has been a lot of deed-grinding going on for me lately. Trying to get those virtues up a notch, and fixing my legendary traits. My Hunter is now actually starting to look like a pretty solid build and all I really need is some new jewelery. A second or first age bow would also be nice of course, but my third age will be fine for now.

You might wonder why this blog is called “Tales From The Great Barrow”.

First of all, it’s obviously stolen from Tales from the Crypt, and the Great Barrows is kind of a crypt. But more importantly the Great Barrows was where i fully realized what LOTRO is all about. GB is the first time in the game where you really need a fellowship, before that I did everything solo, trying to level up as fast as possible. But playing in a fellowship for the first time made me realize that is what makes this game so awesome. It was a PUG, but it didn’t really matter, it really changed everything. I had been in fellowships before GB, but that was just to help someone, or get some help myself. This was the first time in a fellowship where you needed real teamwork.

I still do most my playing solo. But it’s the times when you’re in a fellowship or raid that you’ll remember. You don’t remember killing hundreds of animals to get a deed, or running around the map like crazy for a exploration deed. I can’t even remember most of the epic quest line. What i do remember is things like GB, Grand Stairs, Sword Halls and taking down that enormous, ugly turtle!

There is one other thing that has stuck in my memory too. I had just come to the North Downs for the first time, being level 20-something I had probably done the first quests you get at Trestlebridge but had now gone up to Colbert the Mad and his little camp overlooking the Fields of Fornost (Probably the quest The search for Idalene that brought me there). As I stood there looking out over the dead forest ahead of me, with my back turned to the green fields, a hobbit standing there picks up his lute and starts playing Concerning Hobbits from the movie soundtrack. Epic moment!

I started playing Lotro when the level cap was already at 60. I never got to do Uru and CD at level 50, wich I realise now, was too bad.

Me and some kinnies took a few hours yesterday night to play them both, and I must say that it’s a shame i didn’t get to do theese when they were top level stuff, because it must have been a real challenge. We were six level 60’s (perhaps not the ideal composition of classes though) and it sure wasn’t a walk in the park.

Ooh, almost forgot! Two days ago, I ordered a new graphics card. 4850HD 512mb. Hope it arrives today.